Elena Lo Presti

Bio: Italian multidisciplinary artist based in South London working mostly with writing, ceramics and digital media. I am interested in creating an alternative form of visual narration where the personal and the domestic become the main vehicles for sharing. This often involves the use of traditional crafts such as knitting and crochet, and of cooking and food sharing, which to me are ways to create new communities and connect with people, especially in this time of hardship. I am interested in the nebulosity that surrounds memories, and in how those influence reality, transforming and mutating it.

Website: https://elenalopresti.tumblr.com/

Instagram: @elenaloprestiart

Day 21

Score

Day 20

The picture of a primary school at sunset. You can see the main building, half of it (the oldest part) is covered in red bricks (on the right). On the left the building is newer and covered in yellow bricks. You can see a basketball courtyard on the right hand side. In the middle, there is a hand written note that says: “there’s a kid that always plays basketball on his own and I wonder if he does it because he doesn’t have any friends or because he doesn’t want to be disturbed. (he’s pretty good though)”

The lone kid that plays basketball

Day 19

Black text on white background. On the left bottom side, there are six hand-drawn daisies.

New personal statement

Day 18

A collage, yellow is the main colour, white paper as a base. On the left side there is a flower where the petals are cut out of yellow textured surfaces, underneath a small paragraph: kissed on the cheek, in the lips, be kind to me. At the center there a drop-shaped cut out of yellow flowers and the text “(a flower boquet)” overlapping on top. On the right side at the top another paragraph “the first time you wore a skirt you cried and I held you close to me”. At the bottom on the right the sentence: “a cappuccino with ginseng aroma”. Throughout the page, the word PISTIL is spelled with yellow

Pistil

Day 17

Five warm yellow unglazed ceramic pots are connected through a hand knitted red thread. Two pots on the right are spherical and have small holes, another one is very small with a single handle. The two pots on the left have an urn-like shape and have multiple handles where the thread intertwines.

Interconnessi

Day 16

Twenty seventh of April two thousand and —

Day 15

Picture of a notebook on a white bedsheet. On the left corner you can just about see the duvet and its pattern with blue, white and red stripes. The notebook is open and you can read a short handwritten poem that says:
I can only think about
how tired I am
and how much I want
to sleep and
to eat those leftovers noodles
with spicy tofu
and then sleep again

Bad day

Day 14

Square image with a white background. At the top there’s a black text that says: “I would like to make something with all these blurry flowers I saw today at Waterloo Station.” In the middle of the square there’s a blurry image of colorful flowers. At the bottom of the image mire text: “Like a bouquet, or a crown, or an intertwined basket. Or planting them again and let them grow under the sun coming from my window.“

Speculative Flowers

Day 13

A drawing of a lizard and six pies. The drawings are very simple and only use a single black line. The lizard has a very long tongue and is licking one of the six pies.

Lizard licking pies

Day 12

Small paper zine with an old man at the front holding a mug and saying “I have super squidgy arms!”. The title is: “The story of the lizard who licked cheese and the man with super squidgy arms“. You can see a glass of beer in the background.

The story of the lizard who licked cheese and the man with super squidgy arms

Day 11

Hands Moving

Day 10

A space

Day 9

Picture of some houses and brick walls white yellow and black text on top.

Coffee

Day 8

Blurred pictures with moth red and grey. The subtitles say: “It’s a grounding exercise: count five things that can help you get the hell out of here”.

Grounding (in collaboration with Tobias Gumbrill)

Day 7

Bournemouth Tales

Day 6

Microwave cake

Day 5

Ringwood snow

Day 4

A stranger's kitchen through Zoom

Day 3

Black poem on a white background, talking about flowers and queerness.

Future tense

Day 2

I pick you up from school a couple of minutes past midday; I’m leaning on the side of the car chain-smoking and looking around the empty parking lot until you appear tapping on my shoulder lightly. You are wearing a yellow beanie and blue long jeans, I’m wearing a short dress and tights; it feels like we come from opposite sides of the Earth. The sky is grey but light: you pick the cigarette from my lips and take a long drag, hollowing your cheeks slightly. “Let’s go to the beach”. And we leave.

On our way there you turn the radio up and stick your head out of the window like a dog; your long hair flies around your face, it goes in your mouth. And the song goes: “Falling in love like this; there’s nothing more perfect than a ‘yes, with a light heart”. I can feel the sun coming through the glass on my arms and neck; the skin of my hands flexes and relaxes: it makes me feel good to know that I’m physically here with you. You clean your glasses on your shirt and you say: “Falling in love like this; so suddenly and so urgently”.

When we arrive in Ostia, the first thing you do is buying a Cornetto Algida from a bar. It’s still quite cold, so we are alone on the pier above the water, our eyes divided between the turbid sea and the never-ending town that will go ahead until it merges into Roma. Houses and houses and a couple of trees, the bus number 062 all immersed in the shy sunlight. Right now we are not thinking about anything except for that cornetto and the chirp of the seagulls: we are really happy. There’s a moment when we hold each other close and we promise that things are never going to change, that whatever happens there is always going to be the dirty beach of Ostia, a glass of cheap Falanghina and us holding tight onto our shoulders. 

On the drive back you fall asleep and start snoring slightly. The sun is still invisible under its blanket of grey clouds; when the river Tevere is on our left on Via del Mare I quickly close and open my eyes, until a ray appears over Magliana Station and the rest of the driving cars. You wake up.

Ostia

Day 1

You told me tassel hyacinths’ bulbs are delicious with boiled potatoes. You would carry an empty basket as we would go out in the field, and whenever you’d see their protruding blue heads you would carefully dig around them (they’re always in a group, tassel hyacinths, growing around pavements and lampposts when the sun comes out in April) and take their root in your hands. Lampascione, it is called, the single root of a tassel hyacinth. We spend hours cleaning them with a toothbrush, crouching on the side of the torrent. You have secured a small net to the bed of the water stream hoping to catch some trout, so we clean and we wait. 

You never look at me. You carefully brush each bulb and you forget that I am here. It makes my heart ache in a way that I don’t completely understand: it reminds me of the mild bitterness of the lampascioni when you preserve them in oil and salt. It’s the same bitterness that I see in your eyes sometimes, as the sky becomes brighter and brighter, when the clouds start to dissipate without taking your nebulous thoughts with them. You died in a way that I will always find nonsensical; you fell and broke two vertebrae in your back, and then you decided to die. You didn’t even wait for a trout to bait on the small river shrimps we had left in the net. You waved goodbye from your hospital bed and I was just so sure I was going to see you tomorrow.

This time, you have decided to fry the lampascioni we have collected: we leave them to soak for two hours, then we sit down at the kitchen table and with a knife each we carve a cross. The incision is deep and the bulbs open like rosebuds. You fill the skillet with olive oil and wait until it’s hot: the lampascioni sizzle and open up even more, a fully blossomed flower bouquet. You tell me to mash the boiled potatoes with a fork, and I obey: you let the oil from the fried bulbs slide through the kitchen sink, and you carefully place each flower on top of the mash. We eat outside. It’s cold enough that it feels nice to be eating hot and fatty food; it’s warm enough that you are wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt stained slightly by the cooking oil. You have a hat on your head that is slightly too big for you: amongst the food and the trees, the vast blue sea of tassel hyacinths, on that sun-bleached jute deck chair, you don’t look that strong anymore.